联合国庆祝首届"中文语言日"

（文本为视频大致内容，可能与视频并非完全一致）

The United Nations celebrated the first Chinese Language Day on Friday. It's part of an initiative to raise awareness and respect for the history, culture and achievements of each of the six official languages of the world body.

Some 100 UN staff and diplomats attended a ceremony on Friday.

Kiyo Akasaka, coordinator of multilingualism at the UN, showed his own appreciation of Chinese poetry by presenting his own Chinese calligraphy.

He noted Chinese was one of the most ancient and widely spoken languages in the world. It's also been one of the official languages of the United Nations from its very beginning.

Li Baodong, permanent representative of the Chinese Mission to the United Nations, said that it is of great significance to celebrate the Chinese Language Day for the first time in UN history.

Li Baodong, permanent representative of the Chinese Mission to the United Nations, said, "We sincerely hope that the celebrations will further expand the influence of Chinese as an UN official language and offer a window of opportunity for more people to meet and learn about the time-honored and splendid Chinese civilization and culture."

According to incomplete statistics, as many as 1.4 billion people in the world speak Chinese. In other words, one in every five people in the world speak the language.

Also at the ceremony, the UN Singers sang well-known Chinese song "Jasmine" and UN students of Chinese read a poem by ancient Chinese poet Li Bai.

The initiative of the UN Language Days was launched in February this year in order to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity, as well as to promote equal use of all six of its official working languages throughout the organization.